Tarnish on the saintly wife's halo

Kaus, on the Elizabeth Edwards follies:

"Elizabeth Edwards had to know at least that there was a good chance Young was not the father--and that her husband was. She certainly had known for a long time that her husband had had an affair with the mother, Rielle Hunter. Perhaps she wasn't proceeding with sure knowledge that she was asking Young to lie for her again, but it's hard to see how she wasn't proceeding with at least what libel lawyers call 'reckless disregard for the truth.' ... Did she ask Young if he was really the father before 'demanding'?. ....

Don't expect to read too much of this kind of stuff from the former Edwardsian cheerleaders locally. JR is certainly not going to put ace investigative reporter Lorraine Ahearn on it, and Cone is not going to talk too much about it.

They're going to stay pretty embarrassed about this whole thing for quite a while, until the political climate is right for a John Edwards' "redemption" type of thing.

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Holder (sort of) gets his wish granted

Unfortunately for him, the agenda-driven outcome he envisioned is just not going to happen.

The local "smart guy" does his usual smarmy best to turn things to an outcome his "regressive" sycophants will love, but the reality based local blogosphere will be discussing the subject here.

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'Harsh interrogation ' doesn't work.....except when it does

Over at our local Babble, Dribble, Drool, and Spew Central Ed Cone's blog, there's been the expected Usual Suspect nonsense about "torture"and the CIA memos, and there's an air of positively giddiness over the prospect of make criminals out of people they despise politically.

It is, of course, carefully orchestrated from above to deflect attention away from the growing obviousness of the calamitous Obama administration, and the coming disastrous effects of the incompetence and arrogance of attempting to install such an egregious slate of agenda programs and to incur such massive debts to facilitate said agenda.

But the basic truth of the effectiveness of those so-called "torture" methods remains obscured by their nonsense rhetoric:


"It will be interesting to see if another of these a priori truths turns out to be that torture never 'works.' Or, as Ben Macintyre put it in yesterday’s Times of London ' "24" ' is fictional. So is the idea that torture works.'

Except, of course, when it does work.

But that is, in Mr Macintyre’s view, simply inconceivable. Those who are nowadays popping up to provide instances where — as they believe — such 'torture' as was licensed by the Bush administration did provide life-saving information are simply brushed aside as either mistaken or lying for self-protection — or, perhaps, as right-wing nuts, with all that that status implies of rhetorical and political marginalization."

Exactly.

Dick Cheney called these clowns' bluff a few days ago, when he called for the Obamanation to release ALL the CIA tapes, including the ones that established that the interrogations were effective.

The incessant babblers have a choice.

Insist that your beloved Obamanation release these tapes, or keep your mouths shut FOREVER about this subject.

If you don't, we will make sure you get pounded into the ground on your hypocrisy.

Count on it.

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The economic doom-and-gloomers: ' Pessimism Porn'

You have read here that I believe that one of the major causes of our current economic troubles has been a crisis of confidence.

This has been fed by the constant drumbeat of over the top economic negativism for almost two years, much of which was instigated by the desire to scare the public (ultimately successful) into installing a Democrat in the White House to lead us to the hard left in matters political, social, and economic.

Led by such "luminaries" as the execrable Paul Krugman nationally, and by people like Ed "The Ace" Cone locally, they got their wish. They've now switched their wailing and moaning about the situation into extending government control over every aspect of public life, starting with the financial world, telling absurd stories to justify more and increasingly onerous government intrusion.

What (besides driving the worldview agenda) could cause these fools to continue doing this?

Simple.

Many of these fools suffer a form of pessimism porn.

Here's just one example of the malady:

"This is cruder stuff than I usually go for. Abstruse financial analysis provides a more satisfying jolt of fright, dread, and incomprehension. One god-awful prediction that dances through my head at three in the morning is the 'coming dollar debasement trade,' which will happen when the Chinese and the rest of the world give up, en masse, on our currency as a reserve. The leading nightmare peddlers see it as nothing less than the end of civilized America."

....and:

"Like real porn, the economic variety gives you the illusion of control, and similarly it only leaves you hungry for more. But econo-porn also feeds a powerful sense of intellectual vanity. You walk the streets feeling superior to all these heedless knaves who have no clue what’s coming down the pike. By making yourself miserable about the frightful hell that awaits us, you feel better. Pessimism can be bliss too."

I think people like Cone and Krugman suffer from a variation of this perversion.

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Mickey Kaus opens up the Secret Libthinker e-Mail List

It's the kind of list Ed Cone really REALLY wishes he was on.

Kaus:

"Kausfiles has obtained a copy of one JournoList discussion, focusing on New Republic editor-in-chief Martin Peretz (for whom I once worked.) This is not a parody! It's the real thing. I don't know whether or not it is representative. I've edited it only to remove potentially defamatory passages--those cuts are marked--and left out various boilerplate links and commands embedded in the thread, such as "Print" and "Report this message." ... I won't add my own commentary, at least for now. Find your own lede! ... Reminder to JournoList organizer E. Klein, who likes to take it private: All communications are on the record. ..."

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Mark to Market needs to go

Elsewhere in the local blahgosphere, you'll read some information about mark to market from a know it all who knows nothing, and a media source who is increasingly irrelevant.

Pay attention to what Brian Wesbury and Ron Isana say on this clip:


The stupidity on the economic situation is widespread throughout our local blahgosphere. Witness the absurd responses from one of the most usual of Usual Suspects regarding the damage Obama has done and continues to do to the economy.

This stuff isn't Rocket Science, but the people who have been aiding and abetting the down spiral for political reasons, sheer arrogance, or abject stupidity need to be called out....every time they run their mouths.

David Theroux has further thoughts on Obama's culpability in this mess:

"Meanwhile, Obama has greatly expanded upon the gigantic Bush $700 billion bailout that Obama supported last fall (as did John McCain) with calls for trillions more in federal spending, taxes and debt. Moreover his proposal for the housing meltdown is more of the exact same measures that created the mortgage bubble in the first place, and that he has long supported!"

Obama's economic fearmongering: Good politics (maybe), bad history and bad economics

The current economic situation is no where near as bad as those of the '30s, yet to hear the so-called president tell it, we're all doomed if we don't do exactly as he says.

Key point:

"Mr. Obama's analogies to the Great Depression are not only historically inaccurate, they're also dangerous. Repeated warnings from the White House about a coming economic apocalypse aren't likely to raise consumer and investor expectations for the future. In fact, they have contributed to the continuing decline in consumer confidence that is restraining a spending pickup. Beyond that, fearmongering can trigger a political stampede to embrace a 'recovery' package that delivers a lot less than it promises. A more cool-headed assessment of the economy's woes might produce better policies."

On a related subject, self-appointed local blogging expert on everything Ed Cone has one of the most insipid columns (there are many others of his which fit into this category) I've ever read, in today's News and Record.

He actually has the gall to write this:

"Pollyannas glide right past the huge destruction of wealth and the end of Wall Street as we knew it, the better to tell us that things are not so bad now as they were in previous downturns. The trick here is to compare the current level of, say, unemployment to the numbers from the nadir of a previous recession, as if we had reached whatever trough that awaits us and as if pain is only a relative thing. "

It takes little more than a basic understanding of our current position to understand how fatuous a statement like that actually is. He has no clear understanding of what has happened in our economy these last 15 months.

He then proceeds to entertain us with

"Neither panic nor denial is a healthy response to a bad situation. In this case, denial is probably the more dangerous of the two, if only because it has more political currency and thus seems likely to do more harm. I try to temper my native optimism with a healthy diet of reality. My take is that we have some very tough times ahead and that with some thoughtful action we'll get through them."

This, from a constant drumbeater of negative and misleading economic news, all documented by his blog posts, all to support a warped worldview!

If this matter wasn't such an important matter to our nation, Cone's follies would actually be funny.

Setting the record straight about the origin of the 'financial crisis'

The Obamabots, the "progressives", and the "we need more regulation and government control" freaks have been, and continue to be WRONG about the crisis.

Indeed, they helped create the crisis by such nonsense as the CRA and subsequent vote-buying interference disguised as policy, and their continued wrong-headed campaign has actually made the situation worse. Plus, as is now apparently clear to people like CBO, their "fix" will make the situation worse.....likely MUCH worse.

But we knew that already, didn't we?

John Taylor:

"The realization by the public that the government's intervention plan had not been fully thought through, and the official story that the economy was tanking, likely led to the panic seen in the next few weeks. And this was likely amplified by the ad hoc decisions to support some financial institutions and not others and unclear, seemingly fear-based explanations of programs to address the crisis. What was the rationale for intervening with Bear Stearns, then not with Lehman, and then again with AIG? What would guide the operations of the TARP?

It did not have to be this way. To prevent misguided actions in the future, it is urgent that we return to sound principles of monetary policy, basing government interventions on clearly stated diagnoses and predictable frameworks for government actions.

Massive responses with little explanation will probably make things worse. That is the lesson from this crisis so far."

Most of what we've heard" from government officials" (read "political hacks"), and from so-called Dem/Lefty/"Progressive" bloggers/"experts" has been nothing less than pure trash, motivated by a desire to take advantage of events for purely political agenda reasons. In particular, doomer/gloomer negative talk since late 2007 was specifically designed to undercut the chances of a Republican presidential candidate's election last November. In cooperation with influential people inside and outsode the government, they succeeded.

Today we get word from Ed Cone, one of the largest local purveyors of mis-information about this subject. He intends to write a forthcoming N&R column about "doomers and deniers".

In recent months, I've been giving Cone the exact level of attention his work usually merits: little to none.

That may be about to change, particularly based upon his own doomer/gloomer attitude of the last 18 months, and the possible portent of the column mentioned above.

This is going to be interesting.

Stay tuned.....

All of us have heard the babble about 'right wing rage'

It's a favorite talking point of Dems/Lefties/"Progressives" everywhere whenever they start feeling the heat of accountability for their words and actions.

But as John Hawkins details for us, "right wing rage" is just a cover-up, and amounts to nothing more than left wing projection.

Noteworthy:

"But the truth is that you don’t have to be angry, loud, hateful, or advocate violence to be a 'loud and angry voice' that 'spreads hate' in the eyes of the left or the media.

You merely have to disagree with them.

People will see that in the near future, when talk radio is hammered for some incident or another — it really doesn’t really matter what specific incident, because the facts will be secondary — and then the left uses the occasion to try to ram through the Fairness Doctrine and clamp down on Limbaugh, Hannity, and others. If you can’t make a better argument, then use the power of government to silence your political opponents.

You can also expect the Democrats to go back to the 'right-wing rage' meme as soon as the glow starts to wear off of Obama. After all, he ran as an 'everything to everyone' candidate. He portrayed himself as a diehard liberal and a moderate, a hawk and a dove, a tax cutting free marketer and a statist, a pragmatist and an idealist, a partisan tough guy and a unifier. No matter what he does, a lot of people are destined to be deeply disappointed in him."

We see a superb example of this particular delusion at work over at our pal Ed Cone's blog, the local Usual Suspect haven for smarmy, arrogant, and narcissitic, pseudo-intellectual "progressive" dweebs. This lefty projection occurs whenever a conservative has the temerity to tell the truth while commenting at that particular den of iniquity.

Greg Mankiw: "May You Live In Interesting Times"

Or, as Mark Perry says. "What credit crisis?"

"Commercial loans are at an all-time high (data here) through October 8, consumer loans are at an all-time high through September (data here), and even real estate loans are at an all-time high through September (data here). Where's the credit crisis?"

Here's an important financial chart for you to read and understand

The implications of this are too ominous to ignore. Even Ed "The Ace" Cone, "expert" local financial prognosticator, can't screw this one up.

Let's take another look at the "credit crisis"

Why is bank lending UP?

"As Robert Higgs points out consumer loans are up, commercial and industrial loans are up, even real estate loans are up. Overall, total bank credit is up with just a slight sign of leveling off in recent weeks. So where is the credit crunch?"

"First, one reason that bank lending is up may be that firms with good projects have already turned to the substitute bridge of ordinary bank loans. Second, I wonder how much real lending was actually being generated by asset backed securities. Could it not be that most of the funds generated were used to buy more asset backed securities? (The growth in these securities is certainly suggestive of that possibility). If that is the case then it explains why the real economy has been remarkably resilient to the 'credit crunch.'"

I wonder if one of our local financial rocket scientists can figure this out.

Now we know what a "community organizer" actually does

He gets together with one of his terrorist pals and pushes a radical agenda in the schools of a major US city.

Key point:

"The Obama campaign has cried foul when Bill Ayers comes up, claiming 'guilt by association'" Yet the issue here isn't guilt by association; it's guilt by participation. As CAC chairman, Mr. Obama was lending moral and financial support to Mr. Ayers and his radical circle. That is a story even if Mr. Ayers had never planted a single bomb 40 years ago."

All of which is blissfully ignored by the Dems/Lefties/"Progressives"' cheerfully willing and able tag team partner, The Lame Stream Media.

Sorting out the realities of the "banking crisis"

Seems like every day the "banking crisis" is thrown in our face by the in-the-tank media and bloggers as some sort of indictment of the Republican/Bush years.

Like so many of the other overblown themes our Usual Suspects love to whine about, you need to look beyond the politicized "progressive" hot air and see the facts as they actually are.

Mark Perry's bottom line:

"Despite the troubles in the banking industry, we're still a long way from anything close a real banking crisis like the S&L crisis."

Sssssshhhhhh!!!

That will spoil the carefully crafted illusion if you keep talking like that, Professor Perry!

The Cone Project: Proping up the thoroughly discredited "hockey stick" global warming charade

Cone writes:

"For the past 10 years, climate-change skeptics have been calling the hockey stick bogus. Now the scientists who studied the climate record and produced the original hockey-stick graph have done a new study using more data from more sources — and they got the same pattern."

With the same phony ginned up computer modeling that was exposed as fraudulent years ago?

Yeah, sure.

This piece forever puts Mann, et al, and the bogus "hockey stick" fabrication to rest forever, whether the True Believers like it or not.

Summation:


"The environmental extremists, who have already killed 50 million children through malaria by their now-canceled ban on the use of DDT, the only effective agent against the anopheles mosquito that spreads the infective parasite, are already eagerly killing millions more through their latest scientifically-baseless scare – the 'global warming' panic pandemic. Food riots are occurring throughout the world among the poorest of the poor in many countries: but the desperation, starvation, disease, and death that accompany the sudden famines that the biofuel-driven doubling of world food prices has engendered are scarcely reported by our news media.

In Haiti, they are eating mud pies made of earth, water, a tiny knob of butter, and a pinch of salt; or they sell the mud pies to less fortunate neighbours at 3 US cents each. Has any Western news medium reported this, or the hundreds of other agonizing stories of famine and starvation all round the world? No. Instead, every icicle that falls in Greenland is paraded as an omen of imminent doom: and, as for the crooked pseudo-scientists who invented the hockey stick, supported it, and continue to parade it in the mendacious documents of the
IPCC, no journalist would dare to ask any of them the questions that would expose their self-seeking corruption for what it is.

These evil pseudo-scientists, through the falsity of their statistical manipulations, have already killed far more people through starvation than 'global warming' will ever kill. They should now be indicted and should stand trial alongside Radovan Karadzic for nothing less than high crimes against humanity: for, in their callous disregard for the fatal consequences of their corrupt falsification of science, they are no less guilty of genocide than he."


Cone's post is yet another excellent example of pretentious blogging in support of an ugly and dangerous political, social, and economic agenda without actually taking the time to understand the implications of the disastrous portent .

But does he care?

No, he does not. It simply does not suit his warped sensibilities.

In other words, it's just business as usual for our famed empty suit blogger boy extraordnaire.

The Cone Project: Fixing the Dems' Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae Mess

But if you listen to economic rocket scientists like Cone, you wouldn't know that most of the problems with these programs can be laid DIRECTLY at the feet of Democrats.

Noteworthy:

"It's no wonder that Dick Armey says that "economic illiteracy" is required to join the Democrat caucus in congress."


Regarding Cone's smart ass remark on the job losses, he fails to put it in any perspective besides the one that fits into his snarkfest.

Key point:

"The monthly losses, as large as they are, are only a small fraction of those usually incurred during recessions. This year's decline has cut total payroll employment by less than half a percent, and the impact on workers' incomes has been small. "



Democrats enabled "creative mortgages".

Democrats got the sweetheart deals.

Democrats (Barney Frank, Chuckie Schumer, et al) enabled the nonsense with all sorts of tortured logic and political correctness.

Dems benefited from the contribution largess accumulated before their carefully protected house of cards collapsed.

The job loss is no where near as bad as Dems/Lefties/"Progressives" need to use for political pandering.

So what do you think?

Is Cone an economic illiterate?

Or is he just an academic and intellectual phony on this issue, as he is on so many others?

I say he's both.

The Cone Project: Fisking the "Troopergate" Non-Scandal

Over at Cone's, the proprietor and his Usual Suspect buddies, right on cue, are babbling about the so-called Palin "Troopergate" non scandal.

As we have seen, these jerks are moving methodically on to a new anti-Palin talking point with regularity, as each talking point in turn gets laughed off the stage because of the patent absurdity of the whole program.

"Troopergate" is no different from the rest of the nonsense, and Flopping Aces had this thing covered last week.

Read the whole thing.

This entire thing is a non-starter, and the slimeballs know it.

It's just an ongoing feeble attempt to draw attention away from their presidential candidate, who is likely to go down in history as the least qualified person ever to be nominated by a major political party to run for president.

We know it, they know it, and the voting public is quickly beginning to know it.

A speech to the Democrat Convention

Here's the speech David Brooks wanted to give last week to the assembled Obamabots.

Noteworthy:


"We got to know Barack and Michelle Obama, two tall, thin, rich, beautiful people who don’t perspire, but who nonetheless feel compassion for their squatter and smellier fellow citizens. We know that Barack could have gone to a prestigious law firm, like his big donors in the luxury boxes, but he chose to put his ego aside to become a professional politician, president of the United States and redeemer of the human race. We heard about his time as a community organizer, the three most fulfilling months of his life.

We were thrilled by his speech in front of the Greek columns, which were conscientiously recycled from the concert, Yanni Live at the Acropolis.' We were honored by his pledge, that if elected president, he will serve at least four months before running for higher office. We were moved by his campaign slogan, 'Vote Obama: He’s better than you’ll ever be.'"

As much as our Dem/Lefty/"Progressive" bottom feeders would like to make this election all about Bush, McCain, and Palin, it is ultimately all about Obama, that most emptiest of empty suits.

And yet they tell you with a straight face that the election is "all about the issues".

Yeah, sure.

Why do we never hear of things like this from the Doom and Gloom Economic Klown Klub?

.....as is appropriately represented by the garbage offered by people like Ed Cone.

Mark Perry gives us the details

It's time we shamed these arrogant jerks into stopping their agenda driven promotion of economic doom and gloom hysteria.

Brian Wesbury addresses the Krugman/Cone Klown Klub regarding the economy

"Yes, it is true that the home building and autos sectors
have been hammered. But, it is not true that this
weakness has spread. Outside those sectors, the economy
is not just healthy but downright strong, reflecting
relatively low tax rates and loose monetary policy.......

...Many say it feels like a recession and predict negative
growth. Then the data arrive, and show growth. The
pessimists then say it doesn’t matter because it’s “old”
news. After all, the quarter is already over and the
evidence of recession will be clear by next quarter, they
say.

Eventually, those forecasting recession are going to
run out of time. The clock is already ticking and the
economy remains resilient. Construction and auto related
layoffs account for more than all the job losses in the past
year. Initial unemployment claims remain below 400,000
and the financial sector appears to be bottoming."